The present invention relates generally to electronic mail systems, and more particularly to an electronic mail system that alerts a recipient to the presence of an electronic mail message.
Many different types of electronic mail systems exist. Initially, many of these systems required a user to access the electronic mail system to determine whether any messages exist for the user. This was seen as a shortcoming of electronic mail systems. To remedy this shortcoming, many electronic mail systems added the capability to notify the user that he has received new email when he logs on the network.
Still, as users began sending more and more messages electronically, many users felt important electronic mail was being overlooked. To help users feel connected to the rest of the network, electronic mail systems then began to alert users of newly received electronic mail by causing an audible tone to be played on their computer and by placing a small message on the screen indicating the presence of a new message and perhaps also indicating the sender of the email message. Obviously, this works only when the user is logged on to the network.
Unfortunately in these systems, important email is treated the same as other less important email. Thus, every message from every user is treated the same. The recipient has no ability to judge whether he should discontinue that which he is working on and read the electronic mail or ignore the electronic mail until he has a free moment to read it. Although users are becoming barraged with electronic junk mail, there is no way of permitting users to differentiate between junk email and important email. Consequently, some users ignore their email entirely, assuming that if it is important enough, the email will reach them eventually. This often requires the sender to resend the message or to telephone the user or to actually visit the user in person to pass on the message. As a result, email systems still fail to reach all network users. Furthermore, there are a very few ways for a sender of an email message to pass on the sense of urgency in a given message to the recipient. As such, each email will essentially appear the same as any other email message to the recipient.
Some network operating systems notify users of the impending shutdown of the network via an electronic message that appears every so often prior to the system shutdown. For example, "The System Will Shutdown in 30 Seconds!" Followed by, "The System Will Shutdown in Twenty Seconds!" And so, the messages continue until the system crashes. This system essentially takes control of each computer to alert the user of an impending crisis. In this case, only the operating system has this control, not individual senders of messages.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,278,955 discloses an electronic mail system in which the user can create a rule based-electronic mail system using a graphical user interface. This system is complex and requires the user to set up a series of rules and an if-then event structure. This system requires the user to access an editor to define the rules prior to sending a given email. As a result of this structure, each individual user is unable to control the alerting capability of the system for a particular message. Consequently, the important email sent in this system will also become inherently indistinguishable from the less important email.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,548,753 discloses an automatic electronic mail system that interacts with a database to notify users of events occurring within the database. This system does not permit the sending user to control any features of the alerting function. Similarly, the important email remains indistinguishable from the less important email.
The present invention is therefore directed to the problem of developing a method and system for transmitting email to users over a network that enables a sender of email to control the alerting features and enables a recipient of email to differentiate between urgent and non-urgent email messages.